Aiman Azlan's Blog

28 April 2017 SMK Felda Purun, Pahang I was honoured to be given the opportunity to share my experience with the students of SMK Felda Purun. The main purpose of the sharing session is to empower the audience with confidence, especially in English speaking. This is an issue I find in almost all the schools/colleges/universities I've been to and it is something that I have dedicated my time and energy to in helping, specifically through the Speak Up! Project . I told them about the voice in their heads that often times interfere with their decision making, trying to stop them from doing amazing things. The voice casts doubts into their hearts about their own potential. But, the voice can be controlled. You can be the master of the voice and not the other way around. That's quite an abstract thing for me to get across. So I used my traveling experiences, and the challenges that went with it, as a vehicle to get the message understood. I shared with them my trave...

Photo credit: MSUHEAP I was at MSU Shah Alam today for a forum about depression. The questions and the feedback were interesting. One thing that stood out for me was how casually we use the term "depression" in our daily lives, without knowing what it actually means. Depression is a mental illness, listed in the official Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders 5th Ed. (DSM-5) . Depression is only diagnosable by a trained and certified professional (not Google!) and people with depression needs professional help to different degrees. So when you simply failed a test, don't call that depression. If you feel like you are depressed but you are unsure, then please seek professional help. They should be able to help you differentiate whether you are clinically depressed or just having a bad day. Try not to Google it, diagnose yourself with a serious mental illness, and start throwing the term around. When we use the term willy nilly, the actual mea...

I cancelled an event that was supposed to happen yesterday on April 1st, and I want to tell you why. A month ago, my team and I planned a Step ONE: Activate Your Confidence! seminar - one of the programs in Speak Up! Project . It was not the first time. The seminar was held many, many times before all over the Peninsula Malaysia. In fact, we already visited all the states in Peninsula Malaysia - from north to south, from east to west. So why didn't it happen this time? My diagnosis: We failed in our outreach to people. We couldn't get enough participation to pay for the cost of the program. Hence, we had to cancel it and it was the first time we had to do so. It broke my heart. In the past, we had events where we barely broke even. We even had events where we lose money. But we didn't cancel it. We powered through. This time, we intend to do the same but we didn't have the financial strength to cover the loses. So, cancellation was the option we opted for...